Kevin Michael Connolly, 27, was born without legs. He gets around on a skateboard and as he uses his strong arms to propel himself into a chair at the New York offices of the Travel Channel, it becomes less surprising by the minute that this gregarious, fast-talking young man is the host — and guinea pig — of his own show.

“Armed & Ready,” a six-episode series that premieres this week, makes it clear that Connolly has never let not having legs get in the way of an adventurous life.

“During winters in Bozeman, Mont., my father would park his van at the back of parking lots to make his 8-year-old son ‘walk,’ ” says Connolly, who notes that doctors never figured out why he was born with a complete pelvis, but with no legs attached to it.

“He would get looks from people. like, ‘You’re a sadist, dude.’ But the way I was raised not only led me toward skiing and traveling, but to do so in a really cavalier fashion. If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that you don’t need a preordained solution before you attempt an adventure.”

Connolly was put into gymnastics classes at age 4 — a move he credits with helping him get around effortlessly today — and quickly learned that when he made his condition seem normal, others reacted accordingly.

“The first time I went to elementary school, I certainly got stared at. But by the second week, they cared more that I was hoarding the Hot Wheels cars,” he says. “One of the things I found is that if you feel like it’s normal and you feel comfortable in your own skin, then people aren’t gonna question it.”

While in college, he began creating devices that made his life easier. To roll himself along using the skateboard (he had previously walked on his hands and used prosthetics and wheelchairs, and still uses the latter on occasion), he developed “armored” gloves — using layers of duct tape, adhesive, and an iron.

Connolly considers his rigs to be a second character on the show. For tree-climbing, for example, he and his collaborators removed the legs from a chair, tack-welded spikes to the seat front and added a harness.

“It didn’t work immediately, so we had to go back to the drawing board and rework some of the harnessing,” he says. “But two meetings in, I was at the top of the tree. It looked like something out of an S&M bordello nightmare, but it was cheap, fast and durable.”

Travel Channel executives learned of Connolly after the release of his 2009 memoir, “Double Take.” ABC and TLC had already approached him about possible shows, but he felt that both were too focused on his personal life. He says he “didn’t want another ‘Little People, Big World,’ ” and appreciated Travel’s action-oriented approach.

“One of the things that makes the show so gripping is that he’s willing to face his fears,” says executive producer David Gerber. “He has a very real fear of heights, and one thing he’s always wanted to do is jump out of an airplane. And he did it. He’s always going after his personal bests.”

Each of the show’s episodes takes place in a different location, and features a series of new adventures. The show’s first episode finds him taking on lumberjack tasks such as climbing and chopping down trees in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, while in Episode 2, he dives off a 40-foot cliff and skateboards down hardened lava in Hawaii.

He also, in a future episode, goes to NASA in Houston for zero-gravity training, where he almost destroys a key piece of NASA equipment — or so he thought.

“They let me drive the lunar rover, but I blew a tire on it. I ramped it, baby,” he says, sounding like an excited teenager.

“They had a Martian surface replica with hard volcanic ash rock. A guy handed me the controls and was like, ‘Have fun.’ So I did, and proceeded to break it. I felt bad, but it felt so good.” (The tire was easily replaced.)

Connolly also went to Fort Benning, Ga., for skydiving, which he accomplished thanks to a custom-designed tandem rig with a full-body harness, he also got a first-hand taste of “Ranger abuse.”

“At one point, I’m crawling through mud,” he says, “and they’re yelling, ‘What’s wrong! You got no legs?’ It was crazy, and really cool. I also got to skateboard inside a C-130 [airplane] and ramp out the back of it. It was awesome!”

In addition to hoping that others with disabilities will be able to use rigs similar to his (he doesn’t patent them, allowing anyone to use his designs), Connolly, who still resides in Bozeman, welcomes the chance for people to not only see how much he can do without legs, but to view it as a situation not that far removed from their own realities.

“I’ve been given an amazing gift: being born without legs, so I have a unique viewpoint, but without the other health issues that might go along with it,” he says.

“Not to knock your legs, but it’s a way more valuable asset to have a unique point of view, and be able to help people re-evaluate what they can and cannot do, then it is to reach stuff off a counter.”